Under the Veil
by frozen-delight
Summary: After another successfully solved case, it's snowing outside 221B. Inside, Sherlock's thinking about poisonous poinsettias, while John contemplates the snow, composes a new blog entry in his head - and reminisces. Post-Reichenbach Angst and Christmas Fluff. Asexual!Sherlock/Straight!John


**Title:** Under The Veil  
**Rating:** Teen  
**Fandom:** Sherlock (BBC)  
**Pairing:** Asexual!Sherlock/Straight!John  
**Category:** Post-Reichenbach Angst and a bit of Christmas Fluff  
**Warnings:** None  
**Word count:** ~ 4400  
**Status:** Complete  
**Beta:** Many, many thanks to the fantastic **dioscureantwins** All remaining mistakes are mine, of course.  
**Disclaimer:** Sherlock is the property of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat. No copyright infringement intended.

**A/N:** A gift for **canonisrelative**, awesome writer, beta and friend. Set in the **In Spite of All the Danger** verse, which I love and admire very, very much. Therefore not really Season 2 compliant and basically the AU of an AU.

Merry Christmas to you all! Please enjoy!

* * *

It was snowing outside 221B Baker Street.

John stood by the window behind Sherlock's armchair and contemplated the soft white swirl outside with a serene smile. Like a curtain that was slowly lowered on the stage, the delicate, glistening crystals of ice made the rest of the world fade away, enclosing John firmly in the safe, warm nest that was their flat. Unhurried, taking no heed of the languorous pair of eyes that rested on them, the flakes travelled through gravity and enveloped the world that lay beyond the glass panel in a thin, pale coat of blissful evanescence. Illuminated only by the fairy lights in everybody's windows and the misty glow of street lamps below, it glittered like a distant dream.

The ethereal privacy of the winter scene before him, whose pleasures were considerably heightened by the comfortable cackling of the fire in the background and the warm cup of tea in his hand, seemed to John like the perfect conclusion to a case nicely wrapped up. Lazily, he gazed outside. In his mind he was already beginning to compose his next blog entry:

_Of all the odd cases I've had the privilege of working on together with Sherlock, The Curious Incident of the Six Santas, as I'd like to call this one, was definitely one of the weirdest. So weird that Sherlock has been jumping all over the place in glee. _

_By the way, he's thinking of posting a detailed analysis of all sorts of ways Christmas traditions and decorations can be exploited to commit an unsolvable murder. He's currently sitting on the sofa behind me and jotting down his first theories about poisonous poinsettias in his notebook. The sound of his scribbling already has a rather ominous quality. In case you all want to survive the festivities, I advise you to keep your relatives well away from his homepage for the next fortnight or so. Also, don't frequent any of the department stores in central London to do your Christmas shopping. Because while we managed to solve a string of suspicious disappearances, we still need to get our shopping done. And I can tell you that Sherlock is a pure terror when it comes to Christmas shopping._

_Yesterday, I dragged him along to Debenhams. I wanted to get some presents for my family and I wanted Sherlock to help me choose a present for Mrs H, our much-suffering, brilliant landlady. Sherlock hated every second of it and made me hate it, too. It was a complete nightmare. But then, just as I was comparing several sets of gloves as a possible gift for ***, something happened that turned the shopping into a nightmare for everybody else, whereas Sherlock suddenly stopped complaining and looked as though Christmas had come early._

Involuntarily, John smiled at the memory. There was always something endearing about Sherlock's delight when he stumbled on an interesting crime. It reminded John of the way he'd felt at age five or six, when he'd run outside one December morning straight after waking up because the first glance through the window had revealed a white winter wonderland waiting to be explored. By the time his parents got out of bed and discovered him, his pyjamas were soaked through, his lips blue, his little hands and feet chunks of ice. But he'd been so excited he'd noticed none of it.

Those had been happy days, even if his parents often scolded him for the pranks he played. Back then, he and Harry had been as thick as thieves. They even invented their own language which allowed them to communicate without any of the adults understanding what they were up to. What a shame they'd drifted apart, with no hope to bridge the distance between them. Well, there was simply too much to bridge, in any language known to mankind.

Once, during those three grim years when Sherlock had been gone and he'd spent some time at Harry's place, after getting hopelessly drunk, John started speaking in their childhood tongue. But she didn't understand him. She'd simply forgotten.

John shook his head as though to clear it. The thought of Harry was a painful one and not the thing he wanted to dwell on right now. He willed his mind to return to the case.

He wasn't quite sure yet how to describe the fantastical developments that had taken place at Debenhams. The events of the past thirty-six hours, as unlikely as the nativity story, but definitely true, whirled weightlessly through his mind, unordered, unshapely, an ephemeral ballet of clues, voices, observations, mad chases and the funny image of Sherlock dressed up as a Christmas elf. (He'd made John swear not to post any pictures of that on the blog.)

The laughter that bubbled up in his chest at the memory, succeeded by a quiet wave of tenderness when the ridiculous face of the would-be elf transformed seamlessly into the cold, sweet face which John had caressed on their doorstep barely an hour ago, didn't exactly help him to organise his thoughts on the happenings that would actually make it into his new post.

It had already been snowing merrily by the time they came home and Sherlock had impulsively bent down to kiss John on the doorstep, in the midst of the glorious white tumble, his face radiant with post-case exhilaration and something else that was reserved for John alone. Then, shaking his frosted curls, he pressed his head against John's shoulder and nuzzled his neck. Several icy snowflakes slithered under John's collar, making his skin tingle and prickle. He didn't really mind. Until the cold began to creep up his legs and he realised that if he didn't say anything Sherlock would continue to nuzzle his neck half the night in perfect contentment. Disentangling himself gently, he reached out his ungloved hand, slightly frozen with cold, and brushed a snowflake off an equally cold, sharp cheekbone. 'Let's go inside, love.'

John smiled again and took a sip of his tea. Since the happy flurry in his chest prevented him from fleshing out his thoughts on how to present their latest case to his readers, he moved on to the conclusion of his new blog post. He'd already decided that he would briefly answer some of the questions that had arrived in dribs and drabs ever since the previous entry, which began with the words: _It was early morning when our good friend *** from Scotland Yard came over to 221B Baker Street._

Simple as this sentence was, it had put his fervent followers into a wild frenzy. Last week he'd been too busy to reply, but he reckoned that his new post was the perfect opportunity to catch up on that without making a big deal of everything.

_Finally, to answer a question that many of you asked in response to my last post: Yes, I'm back at 221B. These last few months have been extremely difficult for me. And for Sherlock, I believe. But we have now reached a new understanding –_

No. Mentally, he hastily scratched out the last sentences. This 'thing', for lack of a better word (and, to please Sherlock, he wouldn't frantically try to find one), concerned them alone, no one else. Not the followers of his blog, not the noisy press, not the even noisier officers at New Scotland Yard. It was something intensely private and tender which needed to be protected from the prying, scorning eyes of the rest of the world, most particularly from Harry's insensitive joking and Anderson's sneers.

But what was he to say then? Maybe: _Finally, to answer a question that many of you asked in response to my last post: Yes, I'm back at 221B. And guess what, I'm going to stay for good. _No, that wouldn't do either, he told himself. It sounded too hearty, too flippant, for what, all in all, had been an extremely difficult period in both their lives.

Nothing since Sherlock's miraculous return from the dead had been a cakewalk. Actually, breaking up with Mary had still been the easiest part. She was grateful to him for not dragging things out mercilessly. 'You never saw me,' she said with a sad, tight smile and faded out of his life as she'd already done several times before when Sherlock was still alive, although this time permanently so. All that remained of her was a dull sense of guilt in the pit of John's stomach and a couple of nondescript letters on a business card, crammed somewhere in his wallet. It wasn't fair, none of it.

The next steps didn't suggest themselves as naturally. With Lestrade's help they defeated Moran, the last remaining member of Moriarty's web of crime. After that, John updated his blog for the first time in three years. And then –

Nothing, really.

'I told you, I can't change.' – 'We've been over that. I would never expect you to change.' – 'But you're expecting something from me, aren't you?' – 'I want you to acknowledge that things have changed. It's been three years, Sherlock.' – 'If you say that things have changed and that I shouldn't, is that your polite way of telling me that you no longer want me in your life?' – 'No.' – 'What "no"'? –'I mean, _no_, really.' – 'Then what do you want?' – 'I don't know.'

John felt as though they were moving in circles, taking one step forward and two back again. Well, to be honest, that was what they'd always done, more or less. But now it was infinitely worse. For once again he felt himself irresistibly drawn to the mad excitement that constituted Sherlock Holmes's life. He couldn't help but join him on cases – first rarely, then on a regular basis. However, he refused to quit the job he'd taken up at Sarah's clinic. And, even more adamantly, he declined moving back into 221B.

Sherlock sulked, bribed, stormed, coaxed – all in vain. John couldn't bring himself to move back into the flat where they'd shared such a tense, troubled, anxious blend of happiness. While he realised on a logical level that life with Sherlock might actually be easier now that their relationship was no longer facing a literal deadline (for lack of outrageously clever psychopaths who wanted Sherlock dead and wrapped John up in Semtex to give him a good scare), John couldn't bring himself to grasp at what presented itself as a brighter, more peaceful future.

It was very much like that play Sherlock had dragged him off to see. _Much Ado About Nothing_.That had been during the mad phase when Sherlock had spent the days wrapped up secretively with his phone and the nights with John, snogging him liberally in the semi-public darkness of theatres and opera houses. As a rule, John wasn't that keen on the theatre and most of the time he'd been too distracted by Sherlock's sweet, warm mouth, but that particular play had stuck with him, nonetheless.

There'd been a girl; she'd been accused of sleeping with another man, causing her fiancé to ditch her. Bizarrely, her relatives thought the only possible course of action was to pretend that she was dead until they were able to prove that all was just slander. They did and then, even more bizarrely, her father married the pretend-to-be-dead-girl off to her former fiancé, pretending that she was someone else.

'Oh, come on,' John protested, poking Sherlock in the side to get his attention, 'who do they think they're kidding? This is ridiculous.' – 'It's art, John.' – 'I'd know you anywhere, veil or no veil.' – 'I'm never going to don a veil.' – 'Thank God for that. But he must know it's her, right? She's just wearing a veil, not a burka.' – 'He suspects, but he can never know until the veil's been lifted. Until then, she might be dead.' – 'Christ, are you trying to tell me that Shakespeare was the true inventor of Schrodinger's Cat?'

Originally, the play stuck with John because of the laugh they'd had together afterwards. Then, when Sherlock was dead, it stuck with him because the man who'd loved the girl had truly believed her to be dead and suddenly, miraculously, she'd returned to the living. Now that he knew that Sherlock, like the girl, had only been pretending to be dead, what stuck with him was the bizarre finale of the play – the resurrected girl, covered by a veil.

Unlike the fiancé in the play, John now had the certainty that Sherlock was indeed alive. Yet the hollow ache in his chest didn't simply vanish at the discovery that he'd been mourning a man who lived. He felt as though he were looking through a veil at this gloriously resurrected version of Sherlock, not knowing for certain who it was that stood in front of him. His pain, his hurt, his anger, his loss all seemed to him considerably more real and tangible, even though they'd suddenly lost their object.

It wasn't that he was bearing a grudge, that he was trying to punish Sherlock for everything he'd put him through. It was just impossible for him to forget a pain that he could now never hope to make sense of. And, in contrast to the phantom limp in his leg, there was nothing Sherlock could do to cure it.

As was to be expected, Sherlock simply couldn't understand John's struggles to adjust to a new reality that, rather eerily, pretended to be an old one. And because John both shied away from Sherlock's presence and sought it out, he lived in a constant confusion of what was and what had been. Most uncanny, though, were those moments were the two no longer appeared to be separate entities.

The most intriguing case they'd worked on since the incident with the suicide bomber on the Eye on Bonfire Night, seemingly a lifetime ago now, culminated in a dangerous chase through Hackney where John almost managed to get himself stabbed. Leaving Lestrade and his team to deal with the arrest, Sherlock dragged John away into a dark alleyway nearby. He was trembling all over. Like a drowning man he swooped down and clung to John, sucking the last breath out of his mouth, holding on to his wrists so violently that it hurt. It left John bruised, panting and with a frighteningly real erection.

A gust of cool night wind, heavy with chlorine, whipped against John's face, making his eyes sting, while his nose pricked with the suddenly overpowering smell of burnt explosives. Somewhere further off there was a murmur of hissing, brawling water – and in the blink of an eye, it washed over him, leaving his ears tingling with its deafening roar, ruthlessly carrying him off into the plunging depths that gasped below.

At the back of his mind, a small voice chanted that it was all wrong, but he didn't listen. This was the most real he'd felt in over three bloody years. So real, Christ, it felt like the very last moment of his life. Like a man possessed, he grabbed Sherlock's arms and he wasn't sure what he'd have done if he hadn't seen that flicker of alarm on his friend's haggard face. Instantly, it vanished and Sherlock melted into his touch. But John let go of him and stepped back.

The air around him cleared. There was a faint smell of vomit and urine, a distant clamour of cars. Small vital signs of the pulsing city around them, nothing more. He took a deep breath.

'John.' – 'No, Sherlock.' – 'Please.' – 'You don't want this.' – 'I …' – '_Fuck you_.'

Sherlock bit his lip. An intensely bitter expression disfigured his face. 'If only I'd be willing to sleep with you, you wouldn't hesitate to move back in, would you?'

John didn't speak to him for two weeks. The vivid memory of Sherlock clinging to him was less easy to silence.

A fortnight later, his patience with the both of them thoroughly exhausted, Lestrade reconciled them at a crime scene. Then life went on pretty much as normal, well, their uncannily new-old brand of normal, that was. With the slight change that Sherlock stopped trying to persuade John to move back to 221B.

At first, John thought that now, finally, all might be well between them. That Sherlock had understood how he needed to give John time and space to readjust to the idea that Sherlock wasn't dead. That their life together, this beautiful unlabelled entity, wasn't over, but could never be quite the same again.

Gradually, though, he noticed that Sherlock withdrew into himself. In the beginning, it was nothing, just an intense focus on the crime scene at hand. Then, as the weeks swept past, Sherlock stopped preening at John's cries of amazement, although he still manhandled and insulted him on a whim. John knew these moods and was prepared to wait it all out patiently, no matter how seriously his patience was tried.

Eventually, though, Sherlock no longer texted John when there was a crime to investigate. Instead, Lestrade was now the one to notify him. John realised that waiting was no longer an option. He wasn't the only one.

Mycroft Holmes, playing the part of the concerned, overbearing elder sibling to perfection, took to kidnapping John at regular intervals. Waving his umbrella in a menacing fashion, he ordered John into moving back in with his little brother.

Mrs Hudson once again cast herself in the role of their motherly friend, of frail nerves and iron will. She called him several times, sounding teary and strained, begging John to come back. Sherlock wasn't eating properly and, poor boy, he was desperately unhappy. It broke her heart. And how was she to leave him on his own when she went to her sister's for Christmas? It was unthinkable, but she couldn't really call off her visit, could she, her poor sister had only just lost her husband, oh dear.

Lestrade, the third member joining the other two on the stage of this private drama, regularly invited John to the pub and tried to discuss Sherlock with him. He, too, was very worried and, like the others, thought the only solution to the problem was for John to move back into 221B.

'It's complicated,' John protested more and more wearily.

'Running away doesn't make it less so,' Lestrade replied, running his hands through his rugged grey hair.

'I'm not running away, I'm just…' John defended himself, not sure how to phrase it.

Lestrade seemed to understand him well enough. 'Yeah.' He nodded and sighed. 'Would it have made a difference, do you think, if things between you and Sherlock had been… had been less complicated before – you know?'

John shook his head. 'I don't think so.'

He still didn't, for that matter. Having a traditional relationship with clearly defined boundaries wouldn't have made getting over Sherlock's death and betrayal any easier. John rather suspected that it would have made things harder. As it was, their lack of definitions and boundaries enabled John to quietly, without much ado, slip back into Sherlock's life.

In the end, it wasn't Mrs Hudson, or Mycroft, or Lestrade, who decided him to move back into 221B. It was Sherlock. Ten days ago, he'd just stopped answering John's texts altogether.

Worried sick, John let himself into their old flat. It was a bit cleaner than he remembered, but otherwise unchanged. As John surveyed the living room, a sudden surge of homesickness coursed through him, threatening to choke him. He'd missed the clutter on the mantelpiece. The vivacious tapestry. The Union Jack pillow. Even the skull.

When he'd first moved in, it had greeted him with a mischievous expression. After Sherlock's death, its face or whatever it was that a skull had instead of a face had turned rather doleful. Now it welcomed John back with a look of stern, silent reproach.

John blinked and hastily looked away. Instead, his eyes fell on the two armchairs in front of the fireplace. They seemed painfully empty.

Swallowing hard, he poked his head into the kitchen. No Sherlock there either. Nor any hazardous experiments. The chemistry equipment on the table looked like it hadn't been used in days. John felt his chest constrict. Cautiously, he opened the fridge. It was almost empty of both food and body parts. He'd never have thought how much he'd miss the sight of a severed head. With a wariness that differed widely from the faint apprehension of finding his favourite cup covered in mould which had marked his mornings when he'd still been living here, John pulled open the cupboards. Not many eatables were stored in there, either.

But several packs of Gunpowder Green.

John knew that Sherlock wanted tea to be nothing but tea – but, really, it was so much, much more than that. He was certain that he'd taken all his tea supplies with him when he'd moved out. Which meant that these packets must have been bought by Sherlock. Who didn't care for Gunpowder Green. Who knew it was John's favourite variety. He'd bought it, just in case John came around.

Which John never did.

He'd been hurting, terribly, those three years when Sherlock was gone. Christ, he was still hurting. Technically, he'd known Sherlock was hurting too. But now, for the first time, he felt Sherlock's pain as though it were his own. It was real, ultimately, like John's.

Honestly, who was he kidding?

He should have come here a long time ago.

Quietly, he crept to Sherlock's room. He found his friend curled up in bed. From his breathing, he could tell that Sherlock wasn't asleep. Cautiously, he slipped into bed behind his friend and wrapped his arms around him. Sherlock was cold and stiff. But undeniably there.

After a while, Sherlock began to relax into his embrace. John breathed a sigh of relief. At heart, things were still the same between them. When all words failed them, they were able to connect through touch, and when all touch only alienated them, they managed to communicate with words.

'I've come to stay,' John said slowly, his right thumb tracing small circles on the back of his friend's hand. 'If you'll still have me.'

Sherlock huffed in a breath. 'Only an idiot wouldn't.'

John tucked his head into the small space between Sherlock's shoulder and throat. A faint, soothingly familiar whiff of cigarette smoke, formaldehyde, Gentle Spring fabric softener and, unmistakeably, _home_ wafted up his nose. He sighed contentedly. 'I'm not going to Harry's for Christmas.'

'I know,' Sherlock said, turning around to face John. But for once, he didn't look at all exasperated that John was stating the obvious.

The memory still warmed John from the inside. In the window, in the midst of the falling snowflakes, he could see the reflection of his own happy smile. And then he suddenly knew how he was going to phrase the end of his blog post. _Finally, to answer a question that many of you asked in response to my last post: Yes, I've moved back into 221B._ And that would be all.

Good, now he'd settled that, he could get back to thinking on how he was going to narrate the case itself. He took another sip of tea. It was stone cold. He'd have to go to the kitchen to prepare a fresh cup. But there was no hurry. He could watch the snow just a little bit longer. No one was holding a gun to his head or trying to blow them up. Come to think of that, his new blog post could also wait until tomorrow. They had all the time in the world now.

Tonight, he would just enjoy the snow and the company of his friend.

As he continued to watch the glinting white flitter outside, he gradually became aware that the whole flat had fallen silent. An almost enchanted stillness hung in the room like a single lingering, hallowed bell chime. Turning around, John realised that the fire had died out. Then he noticed that Sherlock was no longer scribbling away in his notebook. Both the notebook and pen had dropped to the ground. As for Sherlock, he lay curled up on the sofa, one hand tucked neatly under his cheek.

A whole new wave of tenderness welled up inside John at the sight. Quietly, he approached his friend. In the faint glow of the fairy lights, Sherlock's calm, peaceful face looked positively angelic.

For a long moment, John simply watched the rise and fall of Sherlock's chest, which suddenly seemed like the deepest mystery, the most wondrous miracle of all creation. Moriarty was dead, but Sherlock was alive and London was vanishing beneath a delicate throw of snow and they were both here at 221B and he could watch Sherlock sleep. As he stood and gazed down, he felt his own breathing adjust to Sherlock's, both of them slowly melting away into a gloriously harmonious symphony of air.

It was one of those rare and precious moments where his soul seemed to unravel and time seemed to stand still and the world glowed with sense and purpose, no questions remaining, all basked in soft, sweet light. Most memorably, he'd experienced that back in the Afghan desert, where, as he lay waiting, panting with sweat and dust, a cinema screen had risen out of the sand in front of him, vivid, razor-sharp images flitting over it, filling him with a whole new sense of direction. This time, though, his position within the epiphany had shifted, subtly but decidedly. A brilliant flurry of light and openness spun all around him, its glittering particles slowly turning in the air, flitting onwards, falling, encircling him and Sherlock in intricate patterns of finely woven lace.

Reaching out his hand with awe, John gently grasped at them. His fingertips encountered a fabric intensely, intimately familiar. With a dazzling sense of clarity, John realised that he'd managed to crawl under the veil quite some time ago.

Sherlock emitted a soft snore, breaking the spell that had held John entranced.

On tiptoes, John withdrew and went to fetch a blanket. He spread it carefully over his friend's still body. Then he pressed the breath of a kiss on Sherlock's brow.

'Goodnight, my friend.'

* * *

Thanks for reading. As ever, reviews make my day.


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